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Dear Mark,

Unless the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) drastically changes direction, the critically endangered red wolf will go extinct in the wild in a matter of years.

After more than two decades of work restoring a population of approximately 110 red wolves to the wild, FWS has recently undermined this success through mismanagement. Today only about 50 red wolves survive in the wild, all within five counties northeastern North Carolina.

Recently, Defenders announced our withdrawal from the FWS-sponsored Red Wolf Recovery Team. The team was supposed to be the catalyst to spur red wolf recovery. But in reality, the team was not organized in a way that would allow it to succeed.

Here’s just one illustration of the problem. Recently, a member of the recovery team trapped a red wolf on their land and held it hostage for at least a day, while demanding a permit allowing him to kill wolves on his property. Ultimately, FWS retrieved the wolf, and it’s now being held in captivity. This is in the middle of breeding season – a time when every wolf is needed in the wild.

How can this team succeed when it has team members who are actively opposed to red wolf conservation? This hostility undermines red wolf recovery efforts at every turn!

Since red wolves were reintroduced to the wild in 1987, Defenders has gone to court multiple times to protect them and ensure their recovery in the wild. What has changed recently is that it’s now FWS that is undermining red wolf recovery.

Thanks for all your help.

Sincerely,

Ben Prater Director,

Southeast Program

Defenders of Wildlife

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Dear Mark,

Government snipers gunned down 20 wolves from a helicopter in Idaho last month — and now they want to start mowing down wolves in Oregon.

The Center for Biological Diversity is going to court to stop the killing. Our intervention comes just as the situation for wolves in the Northwest turns dire. Last week Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed a law ending state-level protections for wolves, stripping away one more layer of protection from these social, intelligent animals. And it’s not just Oregon’s 81 remaining wolves that are at stake, not by a long shot. Wildlife Services is the shadowy federal program that serves as the government’s contract killers of wildlife.

Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio says: “Wildlife Services is one of the most opaque and least accountable agencies that I know of in the federal government. They are a world unto themselves. And that’s a world we are not allowed to see into.”